In the days following her return to Verden Alice Frome devoured the
newspapers as she never had before. They were full of the dramatic
struggle between Jeff Farnum and the forces which hitherto had
controlled the city and state. To her the battle was personal. It
centered on the attacks made upon the character of her friend and his
pledge to refute them.
When she read in the _Advocate_ the report of the committee Alice wept.
It was like her friend, she thought, to risk his reputation for some
poor lost wanderer of the streets. Another man might have done it for
the girl he loved or for the woman he had married. But with Jeff it
would be for one of the least of these. There flashed into her mind an
old Indian proverb she had read. “I met a hundred men on the road to
Delhi, and they were all my brothers.” Yes! None were too deep sunk in
the mire to be brothers and sisters to Jeff Farnum.
Ever since her return Alice had known herself in disgrace with her
father and that small set in which she moved. Her part in the big
_World_ story had been “most regrettable.” It was felt that in
letting her name be mentioned beside that of one who was a thoroughly
disreputable vagabond she had compromised her exclusiveness and betrayed
the cause of her class. Her friends recalled that Alice had always been
a queer girl.
Her father and Ned Merrill agreed over a little luncheon at the
Verden Club that girls were likely to lose themselves in sentimental
foolishness and that the best way to stop such nonsense was for one to
get married to a safe man. Pending this desirable issue she ought to be
diverted by pleasant amusements.
The safe man offered to supply these.